Manitoba Agriculture reports spring seeding advanced substantially over the past week, passing the halfway point, but progress remains behind the five-year average.
Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture says the southern regions are the furthest advanced with the northwest lagging furthest behind due to standing water and cool temperatures.
We have had some precipitation or rain throughout Manitoba over this past week. The highest was in the Interlake and northwest regions. We also had some cooler weather but also some rising temperatures and we saw a big push in terms of seeding from this previous week up to May 19 when we were sitting at 37 percent seeded. Now, by May 26th, we are sitting at 55 percent seeded. We are still a bit below our five-year average of 68 percent and behind last year, which was incredibly warm, and seeding was done incredibly quickly where we were at 85 percent at this same time period but there was a really good push and a lot went in the ground.
We are looking at, based on the forecast, some very high temperatures, and we’re not seeing a lot of precipitation coming down so I think there is some watching for how the emerging crops are going to do with some of these higher temperatures. There is good soil moisture so the germination should be quite good in most regions but we’re going to see, as we’re heading into these 30 degrees plus days and we have some of the smaller seedlings we would really look for some rain as well just to give a relief from these very warm temperatures.
~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says, with warmer weather in the forecast, we know there will be another big push over the coming week.
